TORONTO - Ontario should have fewer evening sittings of the legislature and offer politicians better access to on-site child care to encourage more women to run for office, say opposition parties looking to increase their female ranks in the next election.

With the number of women sitting in the Ontario legislature at an all-time high of 25 per cent, all three mainstream parties are keen to boost the number of women, starting with the nomination process for candidates in the Oct. 10 election.

But both NDP Leader Howard Hampton and Conservative Leader John Tory say politicians need to get serious about enticing women. That means avoiding the sort of late-night debate that marks life in the legislature, Tory said.

"This is a very family-unfriendly place," he said. "I think there's a lot of things we have to look at to take account of the fact that women take on more than their fair share of family responsibility. That means that's what they're going to look at first."

Although politicians just got a 25-per-cent pay increase in the name of attracting more candidates like single mothers, Tory said the working conditions and the general environment of the legislature discourage women from running for office.

Tory, who has pledged that one-third of his candidates will be women come Oct. 10, said the lack of women in the legislature is everyone's loss.

"Women improve the decision-making environment," he said. "I think they will behave better and they'll put up with less of the foolishness that leads this place to be unproductive."

Both the Conservatives and NDP have an affirmative action policy when it comes to selecting candidates; the nomination process doesn't go ahead in a riding unless the association can prove it has beaten the bushes for eligible and interested women.

That's not a simple task, Hampton said.

The party itself has a pool of cash called the Agnes Macphail fund, named for Canada's first female MP, which helps women with expenses like child-care costs. But Hampton said the legislature's on-site day care often has a long waiting list, something that could deter many women.

"This place is not a woman-friendly place," he said. "There are lots of things that could be done around here to make this place more attractive to women."

Still, others say it's not that the legislature doesn't appeal to women. It's that women have difficulty being nominated in the first place.

Rosemary Spiers, founder of the group Equal Voice, said 80 per cent of ridings decide that a "white, male professional is the best candidate." That's why the number of women in politics has stagnated in recent years, she said.

"It's perpetuating the status quo," she said. "With the leaders saying we do want women and if the parties make a real outreach effort, that should make a considerable difference."

All parties are pinning their hopes for the future on young women like 17-year-old Giovanna Roma of Windsor, Ont., who has her sights set on entering politics.

But it's hard to stay focused on that goal when family members, friends and work colleagues all say she should concentrate on marrying and starting a family, Roma said.

"Realistically, there is still a glass ceiling for women," Roma said at a recent conference in Windsor that encouraged girls to think about a career in politics.

"We think we can excel at everything that we do but there still are obstacles in our path."

The governing Liberals have vowed to make sure 50 per cent of their new candidates are women, but the minister responsible for women's issues, Sandra Pupatello, said it's going to take a societal shift before there are an equal number of women sitting in the Ontario legislature.

"In one year ... men (won't) suddenly wake up in October and say, 'I want 70 per cent of the home and nurturing duties,' thereby releasing all women to have a career as focused, full and long-houred as men traditionally have had," she said.

"That probably won't happen overnight but, over time, that's certainly changing."